


Starting to Rise

by SouthernMoonshine



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Ace!Amery, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Character, Everybody Lives, F/M, FTM and back to F again, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Girl! Rook, Happy Ending, Iguana, Let's go full Mulan, Lord help us all, M/M, Other, Roommates, Still no Huns to defeat here, This fandom needed more of it, Yes Havemercy is an iguana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1895226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernMoonshine/pseuds/SouthernMoonshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thom and Balfour, freshmen in college, decide their older brothers should be roommates. Too bad Thom forgot to mention Rook's actually his sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pall Malls and Pistachios

Rook and Amery meet through their little brothers in their search for roommates. Thom and Balfour take freshman core classes together and agree that their older brothers need to make more friends and housing is expensive these days. Thom explains afterwards that he really didn't think either of the Vallet brothers would consider the offer seriously. (Rook knows it's because her reputation in his eyes is so large he can't conceive of anyone _not_ knowing it. It's endearing, really, his faith in her.) Because somehow it was not brought up that though Thom always calls her brother and uses the male pronoun, Rook is actually very much female and it's a habit left over from a very turbulent childhood.

She's secure enough these days in her gender choice and her sexuality, but habit's stuck. 

Granted, she still tends to wear a binder more often than not because it feels comfortable and even what little of a chest she does have can get in the way of shipping crates and busing tables. Thom may now have the luxury of free on-campus housing with his scholarship, but she is not so lucky and works two and a half jobs to keep them both afloat. Thom's meals and books are also covered by college money but his clothes, his coffee-habit, and their mutual addictions of spicy curly fries and Pall Malls are not. Neither is their Xbox.

So she's really not sure what to make of the offer, except it's free pizza night on campus with Thom's new fraternity (they'd hazed him by taunting him about eating a live cricket. Thom had shocked them all by actually eating it, earning him hitherto unparalleled laurels of "ballsy") and Rook can never turn down free pizza and beer, even if it's all cheap and tastes mostly like cardboard and watered-down motor oil. So she comes, wearing some of her rattiest jeans and her hair pulled up in a sloppy bun and meets Amery, scrupulously polite, starched, and wearing _gloves._ Actual honest-to-goodness leather gloves that he does not remove once the entire night.

Rook can't decide if it's pretentious or hilarious and bluntly tells him so. Amery blinks, and says he supposes that's a fair impression, and then earnestly asks her about percentages of rent and laundry shares. Rook's charmed by his old-fashioned manners, because really who even tries to be so polite anymore? It's like he walked straight out of a Jane Austen novel. She can see the stamp of the manners vaguely in Balfour, who she's met quite a bit as Thom's roommate and study partner.

At least she can see the resemblance until Balfour and Thom come tearing past in gleeful spirits, whooping and holding aloft their stolen prize of the Philosophy Department's bust of Pythagoreas. Rook laughs because Thom will regret that in the morning when he's not drunk off the cheapest beer a college student can buy; he likes to pretend he's reformed and well-bred but he's always been the worst kind of low-class white-trash and it shows when he gets his lightweight self drunk on three beers. She's trash, too, but she's more honest about it, and informs Amery she probably won't disturb the writing of his doctorate because she works two jobs and generally only comes home long enough to crash and sleep for about six hours before she's up again to run back to work.

Amery gravely takes this in and then politely turns the topic elsewhere, having apparently pursued this one to his satisfaction. They spend the rest of the evening in hot debate about the the virtues of cheap beer versus a good bottle of vodka: it surprises her to learn Amery's supplementing his education by working as a bartender. She supposes this is where Thom thought they might understand one another, though the dives she has worked in are a distinctly different sort of animal from the club Amery names as his current place of employment. 

Two weeks later, she cleans out the apartment over the hole-in-the-wall Mexican place she'd been paying an outrageous sum for and flops her cardboard boxes and tupperware containers down in Amery's spare bedroom. He rents an apartment not far from campus, in the recently-gentrified-former-slums that the art students so love and yet are not so up-to-standards they cost an arm and a leg. Living in a university town is damned expensive, but Rook's just glad her clothes don't permanently reek of reheated beans and bad tacos. 

The first week, they discover this may be, in fact, a mistake of fantastic proportions. Amery is both a neat-freak and a germaphobe (thus the gloves), is also a vegetarian, and opposed to smoking. Rook had thought the apartment so clean because he'd just moved in, not so clean because he'll spend hours a day doing nothing but that. He doesn't play video games, he watches shows like _Downton Abbey_ and _BBC's Sherlock_ , he drinks black tea and he washes his clothes by colour. He has a houseplant and a small leopard gecko named Anastasia, of all things, reads Dickens in the bathtub and eats pistachios.

Rook is utterly baffled by the pistachios. Who even eats those?

Rook's habit of leaving clothes on the floor, smoking indoors, leaving her cigarette butts in her coffee-mugs on whatever flat surface is available, letting her six-foot iguana wander around loose in the house, eating Cheetos and watching hockey games at three in the morning are apparently all criminal offenses akin to murder. When Rook tells Amery she'd like to see him keep a cranky six-foot female iguana contained, he swears at her for the first time: it's been all of three days.

The fifth day he walks in on her making coffee at five in the morning wearing absolutely nothing but an oversized nightshirt that only just comes to her mid-thigh, and he promptly drops his mug of tea and his reading glasses.

" _You're a woman!?_ "

"Shit, yes, now don't step backwards, Havemercy is trying to drink the tea on the floor."

Havemercy - so called because she's a merciless cranky tyrant, six foot and ten pounds of tail-whipping, jaw-gaping reptile - apparently has a traitorous fondness for the way Amery's tea smells.

Amery gingerly extracts himself from the reach of Have's iron lash of a tail and does a very good job of not staring at her breasts. Instead he's staring at her legs, and she promptly decides he must be a leg man. She does have nice long legs if she does say so herself, even though she doesn't shave. Rook finishes making her coffee and goes to clean up the tea. She gets her shins whipped to bruising by Have's tail and her hand clawed when she scoops up the iguana but other than these displays of annoyance Have lets herself be carried off, tail curved along Rook's side. 

When Rook returns, she's decided no, she's not going to change or even put any underwear on, and all through making breakfast she can see Amery trying very hard not to stare pointedly. It's a polite change from open gawking. She decides she likes it, even if most of the gawking she gets are from guys who are dead certain she's packing something else inside her pants.

Amery delicately brings up the fact that it is, perhaps, not a great idea for them to be rooming together if she is, in fact, a woman and he is a man, and Rook laughs at him. Her virtue hardly needs to be protected, and for nearly a week he's thought he was living with another man, so how scandalous is that anyway? In this day and age, it's practically shacking up no matter what the gender, Mister Victorian, she tells him, and he turns several shades of red. He shoots back that perhaps if she and her brother had not been so misleading, then stops and stammers out an apology about sexual rights and identity and discrimination and Rook has to put her coffee down to double over, she's laughing so hard.

When she can breathe again, she corrects him - though through her teenage years she had taken up a purely male identity, a few years back she'd stopped considering hormones or surgery and simply slid back into comfortable in her own skin. She's really not sure what made the change, because for a long while - and she doesn't tell him this at all - for a long while she'd felt so uneasy in her own body. But now she doesn't, and she's even started picking up girly things to wear, every now and then, as it catches her eye. Thom, being the excellent little brother he is, simply accepts the whole thing and still calls her 'brother' and Rook doesn't mind. It's confusing and not something she's sure she can explain and certainly not to a man like Amery, who's prim and proper and apparently his parent's ideal model firstborn son, even now, five years out of the nest and still in school.

In the end, she tells him she guesses she's still sorting herself out, and Amery looks very thoughtful.

He politely asks what mode of address she prefers and she shrugs, tells him it doesn't matter. She and Thom use mainly male pronouns because for so long that felt more right. So they might as well stick with that. But it makes her feel...she doesn't know...validated? Seen? That Amery asks and it makes her feel good.

She is simply herself, she supposes, who is still listed as female on her driver's license but everyone she works with (is friends with) thinks of her as male and she's okay with that. It's both and neither, a sort of fluidity she's settled into because it feels right. 

The weekend arrives with both younger brothers, and Balfour is utterly shocked by Havemercy and frankly appalled that Thom and Rook both wander around pantsless, swear freely at eachother in simply shocking insults, and will come to blows over high scores on _Call of Duty_ and _Metal Gear_ games. Amery goes around cleaning and complains bitterly about the cigarette smoke, the fact that there are burgers desecrating his vegetarian fridge, and that Rook keeps leaving her boxers in the main living areas.

Amery is both incensed and floored when Rook pierces Balfour's ears with a needle and an icecube and gives him some of her own earrings. Thom, his ears pierced years previously by the same method, simply laughs and goes back to reading Virgil aloud. Balfour and Thom are cheerfully corrupting one another, as Balfour now shares their affection for spicy curly fries and Thom has picked up the inexplicable habit of folding his clothes. Rook cuts his hair in the kitchen and he helps her streak her hair in the bathroom sink and Balfour and Amery drink tea and look somewhat terrorized by the invasion of the apartment.

The Vallet brothers co-exist in a meek sort of symbiosis that apparently employs a mysterious sort of telepathy as the main communication. They neither smoke nor drink, clean obsessively when upset, and Balfour can cook like a five-star chef, which leaves Rook wondering why he's a Philosophy major instead of an overpriced cook. Balfour simply chuckles softly and gives an explanation that involves human condition and intellectual studies. It goes right over Rook's head and she promptly declares him crazy as Thom, who is a Psychology major and well on his way to getting his thesis published. Balfour takes it with good grace, given he's being insulted by someone who dropped out of school in the eighth grade and only barely has her GED. 

In the academic circle represented here, Rook is hardly even a part of it, though she secretly borrows all of Thom's English Lit books and labours through them. She likes the stories, even if she finds poetry to be frankly incomprehensible. Thom, braiding her hair while Havemercy tries to climb them both, sprawled across Rook's bed, says simply Rook is just too pragmatic for poetry. She's practical and he assures her it's as good as having higher education. Rook tells him she knows that already, otherwise she wouldn't still be keeping him in the style to which he's become accustomed.

Thom laughs loudly at that because they still buy half their clothes at the Salvation Army and none of his socks actually match - and it's not intentional. 

The departure of the brothers leaves the apartment astonishingly clean - Amery and Balfour together on a dedicated mission of eradicating mess are very effective. Rook has also actually started bringing her coffee mugs to the sink, though she still leaves her cigarette remains in them. She's been doing that for most of her life now. It's unlikely to change.

She's lying on the floor playing _Assassin's Creed_ at four in the morning when Amery sits on the couch with a cup of tea and politely asks her out on a date.

Rook stops, blinks at him, and doesn't warn him Havemercy was last seen attempting to hide in the couch. A six-foot lizard can manage astonishing feats of concealment, but she suspects the smell of Amery's tea will bring Have out of hiding shortly.

She point-blank asks him why, and then asks him if it's because she's a girl.

To her surprise, Amery says no to the second and answers the first with: "You're an attractive person and I'd like to know you better."

"That's a first. Watch out for Have."

Amery jumps when the iguana, having silently climbed out of the couch cushions on the back, licks him on the ear. He's lucky it was just licking. Rook has a piece missing out of her ear from where Have bit her a year ago. 

Detangling himself from the iguana, Amery delicately explains (in very careful wording that tells Rook he's very nearly terrified) that his interest is partially platonic and partially romantic, and completely and totally asexual.

One for one, she thinks, and wonders how they got to be the special snowflakes when both their younger brothers are - for all their obsession with dead languages and dead men's works - astoundingly normal. She who is he and Amery who is apparently off the charts as well, and after a few questions he unthaws as he understands Rook is not asking to make fun, she's genuinely curious about this asexual thing, and how he can be romantically interested without the anticipation of sex at the end.

Rook knows her own preferences on the matter, and while she's not dated anyone for a very long time, she's definitely a fan of sex and isn't quite sure how one could not want it.

The dating experiment goes well enough, but they leave it off after a week because they live together now and why spend extra money to talk over a fancy dinner when they can do the same over Amery's astonishingly tasty spinach quiche and Rook's favorite frozen fruit-juice dixie-cup popsicles. It is hilarious to watch Amery solemnly peeling a dixie cup off his dessert and Rook gleefully teases him about stooping to plebeian life. He snorts and feeds Havemercy a frozen grape where she is lurking under the table for handouts.

Two months in and they haven't killed eachother yet, and Rook has actually managed not to leave any clothes in the main living area for an entire week. Then she picks up double shifts at the shipping company because Thom got the flu and she's paying for the meds and the medical bills and the restaurant she's working at fires two wait staff for having their hands in the till and her part-time job as a courier for the local post-office gets busy as Christmas approaches, and for nearly two weeks she's only there long enough to go unconscious for five hours and stagger up to get going again.

She's running ragged but she's never really known how to not, and at the end of December she takes all her sick-days off in a row before they go out and collapses on the couch with a fever so high she's pretty sure she's two degrees off from fried brains and sleeps for a solid twenty-four hours.

She wakes up to Amery gently trying to decide if she's dead by poking her with a wooden spoon and with iguana poop in her hair.

Amery patiently feeds her broth and keeps his mouth shut as she totters around the apartment, feverish and falling asleep whenever she sits down. He only asks once about her state of health, though she overhears him on the phone with Thom. Thom assures him she is actually fine, and instructs him on the proper care and feeding of Rook in her Annual Year End Crash, as Thom has named it. Amery listens but is still duly astonished when, on New Year's Day, Rook is healthy and hale again and resumes balancing her variable workload of jobs.

Thom simply shrugs, and explains over veggie pizza and the re-run of _Firefly_ that Rook always half-kills herself in December and works over Christmas and this is why he and Rook are exchanging presents halfway through January and eating cold pizza and watching sci-fi shows at eleven on a Sunday morning. 

Amery and Balfour are mystified but accept this with good grace. They tend to do this, which is why Rook has become more than half-fond of them. Rather than balk at her and Thom's life, cobbled patchwork together over years of foster homes and separations and novel-length Emails, the Vallet brothers simply accept them as they might some puzzling but inexplicable weather occurrence and keep right on going. 

Though when Rook opens up her gift of some astonishingly racy lingerie, she is gratified to witness both Vallet brothers choking on their tea.

Thom takes a moment to figure out why such a response, and then remarks that perhaps he should have let her open that one in private.

Rook snorts and informs him Amery has seen her tits already, which causes fresh choking on Balfour's part and a raised eyebrow from Thom. Amery hastens to assure Thom it was an accidental flashing, perpetrated by Havemercy's tendency to tear great rents in Rook's clothes by climbing up her. Thom declares that he's quite fine as long as it wasn't deliberate, and Rook tackles him flat for that.

Who she is or is not exposing herself to is none of Thom's business, as much as he thinks it might be his fraternal duty to intrude. 

Because there have been deliberate seeing of tits, though Rook is really not sure she can classify it as sex. It's not what she's used to thinking of as sex, at least, as she and Amery fumble their way through this blooming relationship. She has been very interested to learn that it's not that Amery is _incapable_ , physically, it's just not a pleasant experience for him. That experiment had been abandoned not a full minute in and they'd spent the rest of the weekend being intensely awkward and nervous about it. That's passed, and they're still sorting it out, though Rook does worry she's not...giving back enough. She's not sure how Amery can find the emotional gratification as satisfying as the immediate bodily feedback of _yes good_ , but he says it is and that he's happy and Rook's trying to accept this, even though she doesn't understand.

There's a lot she doesn't understand about Amery, really. Not in the least is his perpetual habit of straightening everything he lays his hands upon, up to and including random silverware and Rook's hair.

It's not until spring break that Balfour discovers them in what Rook has begun to mentally call "emotional sex time," i.e., snuggling on the couch. Rook is laying half in Amery's lap and he's braiding her hair absently as they watch some movie, a chick flick Rook isn't interested in. Amery has a passion for these kinds of movies, as dull as Rook finds them. She prefers a few more explosions and high-speed chases. But she is here, curled up on Amery, and between him intensely watching the movie they're just talking about little things: his doctorate paper on the importance of Russia's military regimes in history, her two and a half jobs and the job drama for each, how she needs to fix the brakes on her motorcycle, how his car has been making a peculiar noise when the air conditioner runs.

Balfour walks in on a particularly emotional moment as Amery murmurs very softly how content she makes him feel, and for a moment they are all silent and everyone is blushing, even Rook herself.

Stammering, Balfour makes a feeble excuse and starts to leave hastily.

Only of course he steps backward and trips over Havemercy, who takes violent offense. Balfour's shins are going to be black and blue for weeks.

Thom is cheerfully enthusiastic about the relationship and not as startled as Balfour, though he has seen Rook take up a lover here or there and Amery confesses that, aside from a few failed stumbles in highschool, he hasn't since had a girlfriend. The phrasing doesn't strike Rook as odd until later, and then she laughs about it, because she has a feeling Balfour's half-forgot she's a woman. Balfour surprises her again when she asks and he says no, he hasn't, but Amery hasn't ever seemed inclined to begin a relationship and it's nice seeing him trying.

Rook says as much, in the dim of the summer night's dark, sprawled loose-limbed in Amery's lap and enjoying her post-coital cigarette. Amery's palm is warm over her stomach and his breath even in her ear. He chuckles softly, a little ghost of a thing, and murmurs he's glad his brother takes an interest in his well-being. Rook snorts because they both know their little brothers are forever after them to take care of themselves. She doubts, though, either one had even dreamed the experiment in shared living would have turned out like this. 

"Love you," Amery breathes in her ear.

"Love you...Have don't you dare!"

Amery ducks and topples them both over onto the couch as Havemercy bobs her head proudly and surveys her apartment from her perch on the back of the couch. Laughing, Rook holds her cigarette out of the way as Amery curses about iguanas and their ridiculous owners, and holds her tight.


	2. Touch Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asexual sex.

It's Thursday night at the pub, _The Clockwork Dragon._

Rook hefts her tub full of discarded glasses and silverware and stalks over to the corner booth, balancing her load precariously on one hip. "You fuckers here again?" she demands, and her voice is low and rough.

Thom grins. "Hey, brother. Two beers for me and Balfour."

"Hello Rook," Balfour chirps. There are no study books in sight, tonight, and even as she rolls her eyes at them, Luvander comes slithering in. Shedding his coat, he flicks rain on Balfour and grins at Rook charmingly. Rook is not impressed. Charming he is, but she doesn't go in for pocket-sized midgets. Besides, she already has herself a pretty man for arm decoration.

"Ah, Rook! Good to see you, my dear, do bring me the usual, there's my man."

"I ain't your man," Rook huffs, as she heads back behind the bar. She deposits her dishes, and brings back the requested beers and Luvander's usual hard cider. When she gets back to the booth, they've pulled up the table beside it and Ghislain and Jeannot and Raphael are all there. Greetings are being traded and Rook takes the drink orders, and goes to get the usual round of snacks and food they'll be wanting. This time they've got Ace, Ivory, Evariste, Merritt, and Niall all crowding in to sit and pulling up a second table. Rook pulls the notepad out of her back pocket and jots down the orders.

"Everyone gonna make it tonight?" she asks Luvander.

"Yes," Ghislain returns, and grins at her over his virgin appletini. He's strange as fuck, Ghislain, and Rook would know: she's worked the back rooms of the package shipping company with him for years now. Either he or Luvander will know, right off the top of their heads, exactly who will be coming every Thursday. Ghislain rarely drinks anything alcoholic, and always the fruity girly nonsense Rook will never understand the attraction to.

This time it takes until her second rounding for Magoughin and Compagnon to appear, and Adamo too. Adamo only ever drinks coffee: Rook is dead certain he lives on the stuff, like some kind of professor-robot thing. She's never seen him drink anything else.

Last to arrive is Amery, and as he's coming in the door Rook flashes him a little grin, already carrying a bottle of vodka to the table, where he and Ivory and Niall will all share and discuss military history with Adamo. Amery smiles back, shrugs out of his peacoat, and slides into place at the table. Thom and Balfour and Compagnon and Evariste and Jeannot and Merritt are all discussing fraternity nonsense, something about dues and grades. Raphael and Luvander are apparently trading scarves again, as they do, and Magoughin and Ivory are idly talking shop about music composition class, while Ace ignores everyone. It's loud and pushy and close back here, and will soon smell of hot bodies and wet male, crowded in companionably. It's all academic talk now but Rook knows it will degenerate soon into sports and dirty jokes and Magoughin will start drawing on the nearest available surface and Niall and Ghislain will build toothick and peanut structures and Merritt will get a drink spilled on him, deliberately or by his own fidgeting ways. She's seen it happen, all before, because Thursdays have become a regular thing at the _Dragon._

She's not sure why. It started with Thom visiting her and then there was Balfour and then Amery, and Thom and Balfour brought Luvander and Luvander brought Ghislain and Jeannot and Ghislain brought Ivory and Jeannot brought Niall. Ivory brought Raphael and Niall brought Magoughin and Compagnon. Compagnon brought Evariste who brought Merritt, and Merritt brought Ace. No-one brought Adamo: he'd brought himself, showing up out of the blue one night,

Out of all of them, Rook has previously only known Ace and Ghislain: she works with Ghislain, but Ace had been one of her and Thom's last foster-siblings. She and Ace have a magnificent antagonism going on, fueled by their rivalry as couriers for the local post-office. Rook works only part time, while Ace works there full time, and they keep score. This month, Rook is winning.

Ace looks half asleep, but he always does, except when he's on his motorcycle. He and Rook have had glorious races on the edge of town, where a good mile of flat straight highway lets them get up a good head of speed. Rook thumps him on the ear as she replaces his glass and he only sighs at her. Amery makes a slight face at such rudeness and she just props her hip against his shoulder as she reaches for another glass. Amery does that thing where he doesn't actually seem to move at all yet somehow he's groped her ass and she nearly goes face-first into the plate of hotwings on the table. Those ninja-gropes startle her every single time. Demure, Amery tugs her back upright by her belt and she gives him a side-eye. He only smiles. Compagnon is giggling and Adamo merely tells her to stop being so clumsy. Ivory offers her his shot and she takes it, because hell if she gets into trouble for one shot on the job, and it's the good stuff that she likes best.

Raphael's finally got enough of the good white wine in him that he starts singing, and before he's three lines in they're all joining him for the chorus. Even Thom and Balfour and Merritt, who cannot for the life of him carry a tune, even when drunk as drunk. They talk college history and argue philosophy and sing raunchy drinking songs and compare statistics in football, baseball (Rook and Gislain are the only hockey fans) and gossip over girls and tell dirty jokes and Rook likes the constant background hum as she works. She's the only server who braves them in the back, partially because they never remember to tip but also because she wades in like she's one of them. She isn't, and she never will be, still working while they're playing, but they smile at her like she isn't and slap her on the back and she tells the dirtiest joke she knows just to make Amery blush. She's not one of the boys, didn't go to highschool with them then or college with them now, but they treat her like she might be and she likes that.

They straggle out in twos and threes around midnight. Rook works until closing, and gets home at four in the morning. Amery is not exactly waiting up. He's typing away on his laptop, the spread of books around him on the couch a clear indication of his thesis work. Havemercy is lying on the back of the couch. Rook crawls out of her boots and starts shedding clothes on her way to the shower. Amery looks up and makes a muted noise of distress.

Clothes on the floor. Right.

Rook, in her binder and a low-riding pair of boxers, dead on her feet, turns to start picking things up. Amery swoops in and does it himself, then eyes her solemnly with his face sleep-smudged and his lips drawn thin. Gingerly, he hugs her with the arm not full of clothes, and kisses her chastely on the corner of her mouth. She can smell the lingering vodka on his breath.

Leaning back, he delicately licks his lips and grimaces. "You taste like smoke."

Rook laughs. "You should be glad you're not frenching me. One of my girlfriends told me it was like licking the bottom of an ashtray." She hugs him back with both arms, and turns to continue into the bathroom, pulling her hair down from its ponytail as she goes. She misses whatever grossed-out face he might have made, because she knows he made one, and finishes stripping. She turns the shower on and slides under the hot spray with a sigh of relief.

"Girlfriend?" Amery's perched on the counter, watching. He does that a lot.

"Yeah. Back when I was a guy. Had a girlfriend or two. Made out, kiddie stuff, thought I was hot shit." Rook scrubs her hands through her hair with a groan. It feels really good.

"You are 'hot shit'," Amery says, and she knows by that he's still very drunk. It's cute.

"Come touch me," she begs, because she's tired but she's horny, wound up by all the dirty jokes and watching Luvander and Jeannot necking like teenagers in the entry hall before they'd left. She's bone-weary and wants to fall asleep so bad she aches but there's lust under her skin and cradled deep in her belly. "Amery, come touch me, please."

She leans around the shower curtain, the one that's clear and see-through because it was a gag gift from Thom anyway, and she watches Amery think about it, weigh it. Oh she wants him to be in the mood tonight, in one of his needier moods, where he'll put his hands on her skin and breathe hot in her ear while she does all the work and comes undone in his arms. It's not sex as she has thought of it, but it's sex enough and she just wants to feel his fingers on her.

The thought gives her chills, makes her clamp her thighs together and squirm. She wants him.

He watches her, his grey blue eyes so clear and level even when he's drunk. "Get clean," he says at last, and Rook groans because it's waiting and because it's a promise and ducks back under the shower spray. She washes, thoroughly, her hair and her body, from behind her ears to the bend of her knees and between her toes.

She dries off and Amery slides down from the counter. She's naked and her hair is dripping: he's clothed and still wearing his gloves. The visceral memory of what that softworn leather feels like on the curve of her belly shudderwalks down her spine. Oh she wants him. He doesn't touch, not yet, but looks her over slowly and she presses her palms against her hips, thighs strung tight with desire.

He smiles so softly, and touches her face with delicate fingertips. "You're beautiful."

She's torn between ' _I know_ ' and ' _fuck me senseless_ ' and says neither, closing her eyes and shuddering under his hand.

He breathes her name and drops his hand, and walks away. She follows him to his bedroom, naked still, and the sway of her breasts and jiggle of her thighs is delicious. It's her body and her feelings and she wants him in all the ways she can never have him. She knows his limits and what she is lucky to get, and some days it makes her feel guilty that she wants more. Other days, right now, she wants more, greedy hungry _needing_. 

He climbs onto the bed, sits with his back to the wall, and beckons her in. Rook follows, slides to straddle his thighs, holds herself poised above touching and he kisses her, chaste, on the lips. No tongue, no heat, only the dry press of lips against hers. His hands cradle her hips and she shudders, kisses his temple with wet lips and she breathes in the smell of him, his hair soft against her cheek. She turns and settles her back to his chest, her legs splayed over his, and his arms fold around her. He presses his soft chaste kiss to the back of her neck and the heat of his breath over her skin lights up every nerve along her spine. 

Gloved hands spread over her flanks, fingers spanned, and Rook reaches up to cup her own small breasts. Hand rough with callous and she squeezes, harder than any lover would dare, rough with herself because she needs it now. Thumbs over nipples, dark rose against paler skin, and her breath hitches in her chest, sparks running down her spine. Oh it's good and she draws her fingers up, tip to tip, catch and pinch and pull and underneath Amery's hands she's tense and tight and between her legs she aches for touch.

Not yet not yet and she bites her own lip, holds it between her teeth laves it with her tongue and pinches first one nipple, then the other, rolling them between thumb and forefinger. Amery's hands shift and slide over her skin: he presses down over her mound, her stomach muscles tight and shuddering beneath his hand and she rocks her hips up into him, inner muscles clenching. Oh she's _wet_ and hasn't been touched down there yet.

His hands slide over her inner thighs, fingers splayed and pressing, pulling back up to cradle over her hips and her breath comes hot between her wet lips, as she rolls them together and slides her own hands over the arch of her ribs, the curve of her stomach. Her fingers thread through coarse blonde curls and she presses down without moving, a muted thrill spiking up her body. Oh, oh this, and she frees one hand to clutch at the round of one breast. With her other, palm holding steady pressure over her labia, her clit, she works a finger into her folds, presses at the entrance, finds herself slick and wet and needing it.

Amery kisses the back of her neck and she shudders, drawing that one wet fingertip straight back up until she finds that nub and rolls her finger across it. She gasps and her legs part, muscles clenching. Oh yes, yes, this, _this_ and her fingers splay spreading herself, rolling over slick wet folds and her hips rock, as she starts up the circular flick of her fingers, the quick rough rhythm, raw sparks dancing down her nerves. Breath stutter-start in her chest and she rolls her hips, thighs flexing, bare toes digging against the sheets for purchase.

Amery's hands rise from her hips, cradle the shallow curve of her breasts and she moans, leather soft on her skin, his breath quiet and fast in her ear, the press of his lips against her neck.

The pressure building tight in her belly and she rolls her hips, soft moans forced out of her throat, fingers beginning to tire, the rhythm all important. Pressure now, harder, faster: her body slides down Amery's lap, back curving belly flexing. Thighs shaking-tense as she pulls herself up, the pleasure suffusing her, rising for that peak. Amery's fingers on her breasts leather over nipples _fingers in her body filling her spreading her Amery inside her taking her_ and her legs draw open for the imaginary intrusion and it all _snaps_ loose pleasure flooding her hips juttering and the long drawn-in whine of her breath as Amery breathes her name like a prayer in her ear.

Rook falls limp in his arm, legs splayed wide, body suffused in the aftershocks of _yes good this_. Her heart races and her breath staggers and Amery draws her unresistingly close. His palms press on her: over her heart, over her womb and she arches her back gently to press into the touch. Oh glory but that was so good, and her eyes are closed, body sated and relaxed and mind quieted after the rush.

Amery holds her until her heart has slowed, and kisses her soft on the cheek.

"You're beautiful," he breathes. "My Rook. I love you, I love to watch you, I need you here, with me, so close... You make me so happy, my love, my Rook."

Soft and tender, as he holds her, and Rook drowses in long slow heavy waves. "Love you," she whispers, and then again because she can't tell if she said it out loud, "Love you, Amery."

She still worries, sometimes. He tells her it's enough, watching her, knowing she feels good. She tries to give him back what he needs: the words she is not good at, the whispers, the things he needs _said_ but it's not a very fair trade, she thinks. She is not good at words. He deserves someone who would be better at telling him what he needs to hear. He gives her everything he can, after all. 

She vaguely feels him pull her down to the sheets, cradled against his warmth. She hears him unsnap the cuffs of his gloves, the noise sharp in her sleepy state, drawing her up. The settling of his bare hands on her skin pushes her back under, because Amery doesn't sleep in his gloves, and his breath is warm at the back of her neck. She sleeps.


	3. Waterslick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scars and stories.

"Double-dog dare you," Thom declares, and swings an arm through the water. The spray doesn't even reach Rook's bare toes, as she lounges in the shade with Amery beside the pool. Rook raises an eyebrow, and blows a raspberry at her baby brother.

"If you want your ass kicked that bad..." She stands up. Fortunately, she's binding today, and it's an old one - she'd half-planned to swim, but apparently Amery nor Balfour are, and neither of course is Compagnon. He doesn't like water.

Amery catches at her wrist, sweat slick between their skin. "Rook..." His gaze drops to her chest, then back up to her face. He sounds vaguely worried.

Rook snorts. She doesn't care, really, if anyone finds out she's a girl. A few years ago, yes, she'd have cared a great deal, but now? She's herself, and though she's binding she's not packing and they're more likely to notice that first, not the gentle curve of her chest. (She quit packing hard two years ago anyway, no-one's noticed.) "What, think I can't swim?"

"Well, Amery can't," Balfour adds in. "Neither can I."

Rook and Thom give him dumbfounded looks. "What the actual fuck?" Rook demands. "How can you not know how to swim?"

"Pools," says Amery, in that pedantic tone he has, "Are repositories of germs and bacteria."

Rook snorts, because of course, and from behind Thom splashes at her again. It sprinkles the back of her calves and it feels like all her hair stands on end at once. She whirls and races for the edge of the pool. Thom, green eyes grown wide, shoots underwater like a startled frog. Rook goes in after him in a full clean dive, hitting the water sharp and slick like a seabird going under after a fish. She doesn't surface, momentum speeding her underwater, eyes wide open and stinging with the chlorine until she can grab Thom's thrashing ankle and pull him deeper. He kicks her in the chest and she nuts him with an open palm and they both surface spluttering.

Rook gasps a breath and bobs under to sweep her hair out of her face. She kicks out of her jeans and Thom helpfully grabs her long-sleeved button-up overshirt so she can peel out of that. Clothes over her arm, she lazily sidestrokes over to where her sandals are floating in the middle of the pool. She swims to the edge and starts throwing her clothes at Amery. Ghislain whistles through his teeth and Luvander makes comments about fashion while Compagnon giggles about strip-shows.

Amery, as Rook thought, fetches her clothes by his fingertips and drapes them along the sunny fence to dry. 

Pleased, Rook gasps a breath and turns a backflip off the side of the pool and arrows off underwater like a fish, aiming for Thom.

She and Thom dunk Ace, and Raphael gets caught in the retribution, and he drags Luvander in, and Jeannot comes thrashing in to defend his boyfriend and it gets fairly even until Ghislain and Niall and Magoughin and Merritt and Ivory and Evariste all come charging in and then, then it's just flat out _war_.

Rook and Thom are the hardest to catch, and she's pleased. She remembers teaching Thom to swim a long long time ago, in the seasalt and sand.

But one by one, waterlogged and laughing, they drag themselves out of the pool. Rook comes out in her black Abney Park Tshirt and her plaid boxers and threatens to drip on Amery.

He fetches her a towel. And a beer.

The others begin to troop inside, arguing about who won last in Guitar Hero and asking if anyone remembered to order the pizza. Amery begins to follow the others in, and glances back at Rook questioningly. Rook waves him on in, hangs the towel over a chair and goes to sit on the steps of the pool, weightless, to drink her cold beer. Thom joins her, his own beer in hand, and they let their legs float and bob to the surface. Hers are almost hairy as his.

She's drunk half her beer before Balfour comes out. It's getting dark but no thoughtful soul has turned the poollights on. Rook's got her head tipped back, watching the bats swoop and dive in flight and wondering what it's like to ride those mad twisting aerial arabesques. Thom is leaning against her shoulder. Balfour comes to stand barefoot on the first step, sipping his glass of wine.

"Thom, Merritt wants you inside. Something about an honor-duel on Freebird."

"I'll give him Freebird," Thom mutters, without heat, and rose from the water, sending waves over Rook. She salutes him with her beer and keeps watching the bats and the edge of Balfour's face.

They are quiet for a little while. Rook's beer is three-quarters gone when she asks, "Why don't you swim, Balfour?"

Balfour doesn't answer, and Rook sits up in the water to look at him, floating weightless and her butt bouncing along the hard step. He looks at her, opens his mouth, and closes it again. He sits, gingerly, on the edge of the pool, and his wineglass sings of a soft clear glass note as he sets it aside. He unsnaps the wrist of his glove.

Rook knows Balfour and Amery are forever wearing gloves. Amery wears his for fear of germs and a dislike of skin-on-skin. She's never asked why Balfour wears gloves, assumed it was for imitating Amery.

Balfour pulls first one glove off, then the other. And now, even in the dim purple light, Rook can see the pattern of old injury, the light-and-dark dapple of skin-grafts, the shiny tightness of scar tissue. Balfour's hands are patchwork and move so easily as he unbuttons his shirt. He lets it slide from his shoulders, and there: across his chest, streaked down his forearms, over his left shoulder and....

He stands to unbutton his pants, tosses shirt and clothes aside. Raw down his back runs the swathe of scarring, down the runnel of his spine to his shortribs.

Silently, he picks up his wineglass in his bare scarred hand and slips into the water to sit beside Rook. He sips his wine. 

Rook waits.

"I was seven. I pulled a hot pan of grease off the stove by accident." Balfour rubs his thumb over his pointer finger. It has no nail, Rook realizes. "I was very badly burned. For a little while, they weren't certain I was ever going to use my hands again. The scarring...it's called a contracture. My fingers and wrists were pulled back by the scarring, like this." He cocks his wrist back and in a disturbing flexure, rolls his fingers back at a forty-five degree angle to the back of his palm. Rooks hears tendons crack over bone, and Balfour shakes his hand out.

"So I don't....know how to swim. People...ask questions, even after all the plastic surgery my parents paid for. They are...unkind, often."

Rook drains the last of her beer. "I'll teach you."

Balfour blinks, startled.

Rook sets her empty beer bottle on the concrete and pushes off into the water, rolling over to float. "Come here. I'll teach you how to swim."

Balfour blinks at her, and then drinks the last of his wine. He sets the glass down softly, with the same chiming note as before, and wades into the water with her. She smiles at him, and takes his hands. "Take a deep breath. As long as you're full of air, you won't sink easy." And she pulls him off his feet. He bobs, starts to struggle, and then sucks in a good deep breath as she tows him through the water. "Good, good. Kick your feet like a frog. No, wider...there, like that."

She coaxes him through it and eventually he swims the lap of the pool with her in an awkward breaststroke. They come to rest at the steps again, and Balfour's hair is in his eyes but he can't stop smiling. Not even when Rooks picks up his hands again, fingers running over scarred flesh in the dim. The reflection of streetlights is barely enough to see by.

"So you can feel...?"

"Well. Not a lot. I...have to be careful. I could hurt my hands very badly and not notice." His laughter only fades when she slides her hands up his arms, over his shoulders and down his back, tracing by feel. "Rook?"

"Hush," she tells him, and rests her lips on his shoulder. He's very still, barely breathing. "You should get tattoos. To cover your scars."

His chest rises with a surprised inhale. Under her lips his skin is dimpled gooseflesh. He voice in her ear is nothing like Amery's and yet the same, in the dark, the way it reverberates through the bones of her palms flat on his back. "I hadn't...they can do that?"

Rook laughs and leans away, the water swirling cold between them. Balfour yelps when she peels off her dark shirt, and unzips her binder. She shrugs it free and turns to display her side, lifting her arm. From the curve of her beast, spidering across her side, snaking around her back is a tattoo, dark lines on her pale skin, and Balfour forgets himself and reaches to touch.

"Oh, it's...a dragon?"

"Yeah. Clockwork dragon. Called steampunk. Thom likes that shit. Got me into it." Rook shivers as he traces out the dark lettering along her shoulderblade. "Thom's idea."

"Havemercy. That's your iguana."

"Yeah. He thought it was funny, says she might as well be a dragon. You can still feel the scar...." She takes his hand, traces it along her flesh. "I got in a fight to keep Thom safe. One of our foster parents was beating him. I went after the fucker with a knife. Well. He had a shotgun full of birdshot. Fuckin' took off half my side, I could see my ribs. I think I was ten. I think."

"Wow. I....I think I'd like to see it in the daylight," Balfour says, pulling his hand away.

"Sure. And I'll take you to my tattoo parlour." Rook grins at him as she shrugs on her binder again. "Ah, shit, this thing never goes on right when it's wet...."


	4. Pride and Prejudice (Let's Start a Riot)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spring formal, questioning of dates, homophobia, and what Rook and Amery do about it.

"Amery! Have you seen my fucking earrings?" Rook bellows.

Havemercy, perched on her shoulders, licks her ear helpfully. Rook reaches up and scratches under the iguana's jowls. She's digging through her jewelry box, unlit cigarette tucked in the corner of her mouth.

"Which earrings, my love?" Amery wants to know, ghosting silently in. The only way to tell he's having a lazy day at home is the fact that his shirt is untucked from his pants. Rook glances up at him, weighed down by six foot and ten pounds of iguana. He has his own lizard out, a little leopard gecko named Anastasia, peering out of his shirt-pocket with a cricket leg protruding from her mouth.

"My big ones," Rook explains, and stirs her fingers through her jewelry box again: loose earrings, necklaces, and the odd ring or two glitter under the light. There is a predominance of gold. Rook likes gold jewelry, it's flashy and bright and warm, and it looks damn good on her.

From the quality of the silence, she realizes Amery is trying not to say something unusual. She looks up at him. His lips are pressed together. At last he says, "But they're all big?"

Rook laughs. Disgruntled, Havemercy starts climbing down from her shoulders. She dislikes it when her human perch is loud. Rook stops balancing the iguana and grabs her lighter, finally, and lights up. She can't really _move_ when Have is on her. Inhaling deeply, she resumes digging in her jewelry box. Amery comes and shuffles his knees up against Rook's back, as she sits spraddle-legged on the floor. Have crawls under one leg and lies there, flat, an iguana rug. It's spring but it's still damned cold out and it's chilly in here. Rook is warm, and Have likes her better than the heatlamp, for reasons unknown.

"I need my big hoops. The gold filda-whatever. With the fancy curlicues," Rook tells him.

"I...don't believe I've seen those." Amery starts straightening her hair, leatherclad fingers smoothing through it.

"Don't wear 'em often. Thom wants 'em for some fuckin' reason. Think it has to do with the skit he an' Balfour are doing for Philosophy. Hell if I know." Rook flicks the ashes off her cigarette into her coffee mug.

"Rook." That careful, precise tone means Amery has a bomb to drop, one that he's been stewing over for a while. Rook tips her head back, leans back against his legs, disarranging his fingers from her hair. Instead he smooths his fingertips across her forehead, over her temples. "Would you please attend the spring formal with me? As my date?"

Rook blinks up at Amery a moment, then leans forward to blow out a long stream of smoke as she laughs. "What the hell? Fuck, you want me in a dress or a tux?"

The noise Amery makes starts her laughing again. "Do you even _own_ a dress?" he wants to know, sounding utterly dumbfounded.

"Yes, I do." She's wearing plaid boxers and a sheer babydoll nightie top, complete with lace: other than flat-out-naked it's about as sexy as she gets. She prods her flat chest with a careless thumb. Genetics and binding have not been kind, and honestly she's not sure she'd fit into her old dresses. "Fuuuuuck I'd have to buy one of those shitty puff-up bras." She shakes her head, and tilts her head back to look up at him, grimacing. "Those suck hairy asscrack."

Amery merely blinks at her crudity. "I didn't...I had presumed you would wear a suit."

"Hell, if you're fine with that. I don't give a damn anymore, but your image might take a nosedive if everyone thinks you're gay, Mister President of the Highest Grades Club."

Frowning, Amery crouches down and kisses her on the forehead, chaste and dry-lipped. "I do not care about my damn image. I want to have a nice night with the one I love. It doesn't matter to me if you feel most comfortable as a man or a woman. I love you and who you identify as will not change that."

Rook smiles, helplessly, because as ridiculous as it is, as outrageously sappy as it is...it makes her feel awful warm and fuzzy inside. "You'll care an awful lot about your damn image when Thom and I get fucking drunk as hell and start cussing people out."

Amery grimaces. "That is an entirely different image to worry about."

Rook doesn't see the difference, really, and kisses him on the cheek.

Which is how she ends up on the night of the spring formal tying Thom's tie properly while Amery finishes pinning up her hair, scolding every time she moves too much. It's a ridiculous girly hairstyle, with curls and pins and glittery bits, and where in hell Amery learned this nonsense she has no idea. It's the girliest hairstyle she has ever worn, and that includes the Saint Patrick's day tiara she wore last week at work. It was glittery green and plastic and she's still finding glitter in her clothes, because glitter is forever. Amery's got two more bobby pins stuck in his mouth and Balfour is fussing with his cufflinks and Thom is making pretend choking noises as Rook straightens his tie.

"How in hell you never learned to tie a tie is beyond me," Rook tells him.

"I know. But you do it better," Thom returns, cheerfully.

"Says an awful damn lot that you can fasten a fucking bra behind your back but can't do your tie straight." Rook is gratified to hear both Vallet brothers choke on that one.

Thom, serene, says, "You're just jealous I always looked better in your bras anyway."

"Stand a little closer, so I can hit you in the balls while you say it again," Rook purrs at him. Thom just chuckles. Balfour is staring, beet red, and from the way Amery's pulling on the one lock of hair, Rook bets he's doing the same. She finishes with Thom's tie. "There. Fucking dashing. Go pick up the ladies and embarrass yourself to hell and back with my fucking blessing."

"Don't flaunt your taken status in front of me so, you'll give me a damn complex," Thom laughs, standing up and straightening the cuffs of his shirt.

"Like you don't have one already? Amery, are you gonna finish my hair or not?"

Amery makes a little noise in his throat, the one that says he is so completely lost he doesn't even know where to start. He makes it a lot when Rook and Thom start talking, or when he sees the mess Rook's made of the apartment in his absence. But he coils and pins the last lock of hair, and Rook reaches up to feel gingerly at the creation. Amery catches her wrists.

"No. You'll knock it down and we'll be late."

Balfour coughs a little, and reaches for his jacket.

Thom takes pity on him and pats him on the shoulder. "It was never a thing. My experiments with gender fluidity never took off. But with my sister deciding she was now my brother, well, a little investigation was in due course, you understand."

"I suppose that makes sense," Amery allows, as he reaches for his own cufflinks. He fastens them deftly: they are little leopard geckos in gold and onyx and Rook finds this exceedingly cute. Really, this man. Rook stands and moves closer on socked feet, to kiss him on the cheek. Smiling quietly, he returns the favor. 

"Yeah. I'm surprised I didn't fuck Thom up even more." Rook shrugs and goes to get her jacket. Her tie matches Amery's, a silvery-sky-blue that makes both their eyes brighter. Neither she nor Thom have cufflinks, though, and their suits are decidedly less expensive than the Vallet brothers' are. 

"It was foster-care that fucked me up, it was never you," Thom assures her, loyally. "You have always been good to me."

If they get much more emotional tonight, between Thom and Amery, Rook's going to do something stupid and girly. Like cry. Instead she hugs Thom and noogies him. Thom howls with protest but cannot return the favor because Rook's hair is done up in the elaborate curled updo. The whole thing looks like a prom date's dream, and combined with the delicate silver and blue chandelier earrings Amery gave her, Rook actually manages to look vaguely feminine, which is something that rarely happens given her broad jaw and unfortunate nose.

Once handkerchiefs, shoes, and wallets are all properly located, they hurry out. They all pile into Balfour and Amery's car, a little pale blue hatchback hybrid which the brothers take turns driving. Thom expresses his relief and his hope Amery's driving is better than Rook's, who has been known to clock in at an even hundred on a forty-five speed limit zone on her motorcycle. Amery looks duly horrified: he himself only ever coasts along at five over the limit. Rook threatens to hang Thom with his own tie. Balfour laughs and he is added to the list of future victims. While Rook and Thom plot with how to make it look like an accident (how else do you get away with murder these days) Amery drives very sedately and Balfour offers increasingly improbable suggestions. Thom finally shuts him up with "haven't you ever watched _any_ crime dramas? Reading Sherlock mysteries does not count!"

They arrive in due time, and shuffle along to find their seats before everything starts. Rook is deeply amused to find there are namecards, and Thom's does indeed read Thom. 

"So they let you use your middle name?" she asks, cheerfully.

"Yeah, I've had a hell of a time with it because all my classes are registered under my full name," Thom sighs.

"You should get your name changed, like I did," Rook tells him.

"....what's your first name?" Balfour asks, puzzled.

"Hilary," Rook declares, gleefully. "Hilary Thomas Drake."

"You see why I go by Thom," her little brother sighs.

"So your name really is Rook? I thought it was a nickname," Balfour declares, turning to look at Rook.

"Nah. Changed it soon as I could. I didn't want a girl's name." Rook shrugs, because she still doesn't. Besides, the forms are hell and she hates legal tangles.

"Rook really is his name. Rook J. Drake," Thomas reports, in a snotty tone of voice. Rook swats him.

"What's the J stand for?" Amery asks, taking her by the arm.

"John." Rook shrugs, and allows Amery to tow her away from further personal harm to her brother. Thom fakes great relief. He's a great actor, her little brother. "I'll tell you what it used to be later."

"I would be honored," says Amery, but his lips are pressed together just so and she knows he's laughing.

She swats him on the arm next. Luvander, bouncing over, protests the violence. Rook threatens to hit him next. He shies back out of reach. "My stars, Rook, your hair is stunning. I've never seen you look so fabulous. Those earrings match your eyes, did you know?"

"No," says Rook, looking at Amery. He would do that kind of thing deliberately. "I didn't."

Amery only blinks serenely. 

There is free fancy food and some excellent wine before any dancing begins. Rook is terribly amused to watch Balfour delicately fend off the ladies and Thom try to catch a few. She and Amery sit and lurk: after his speech he'd had a few people to talk to. Rook, unknown and mostly ignored, drinks her wine lazily, and smiles at the few compliments to her hair. People seem confused by it, and by her presence with Amery. One or two people give her a thumbs-up, though, and one drag queen (Rook knows exactly what to look for) huskily congratulates Amery on his life choices. Amery, smooth as a politician, takes everything with grace and replies politely. Rook has no idea how he does it.

Amery does take a few turns on the dance floor, and is quite startled when Rook cuts in on a waltz. "I didn't know you could dance."

She lets him lead. "One of our foster-mothers thought all good little children should know classical music and dance. You're not surprised at Thom."

"Well, no, but Thom tends to cultivate better manners than you do."

Rook swats him and Amery laughs. Several people nearby look utterly stunned. Rook is smug: she's willing to bet they had no idea Amery could laugh. He presents such a stiff attitude normall it's no wonder. Rook can still recall her first impression of him, barely a year ago: utterly stuck-up and proper and no fun at all. How wrong she was, now that she's gotten to know him.

Not all is well in paradise, however, and it's when she goes to grab herself another few sips of wine that the group corners her. She's known they were coming: they'd been harassing Luvander earlier, until Ivory had stepped in. Luvander is very openly gay, and she and Ivory are just odd, but Ivory's oddness is of the "will probably go postal on you" flavor rather than "girly hairdo and tux and dances with men" she's got going on tonight. They're a few boys and a couple of girls, and Rook decides - taking in the untied ties and the black dress and spiked heels of the one girl - they think they're the tough crowd. How cute. 

"Hey. So you should tone it down. I don't know if you understand, but Amery's got a _reputation_ here," says the girl in the hot-pink flouncy dress. Ringleader, then.

"Yeah, you fags need to cool it," one of the guys slurs. He's either been hitting the liquor really hard tonight, or he was doing something earlier. Given the way a few of them are sniffing, Rook's willing to bet the elite drug of choice tonight was probably cocaine.

Rook sips her wine. "I don't know where you bitches get off deciding who gets to do what," she drawls, hiding her anger behind a bored front. These kinds of self-righteous rich pampered know-it-alls get right on her last nerve. "Amery's a grown man, he can make his own damn choices, unlike the rest of you snotty brats."

"You watch your mouth, trash," another guys declares, pushing forward.

"Trash? Me? You're the one making all the fuckin' trashy comments," Rook sneers. "So shut the fuck up, or I'll kick your ass out to the curb where it belongs."

The first man tries to take a swing: the girl in the pink tries to hold him back. Rook throws her wine in his face, and pounces. Within minutes it's less of a fisticuffs and more of a barroom brawl, and Rook's eye is blacked and her suit is probably going to be ruined and when she nuts somebody she realizes Thom is right in here with her, glasses crooked and nose bloodied but teeth bared. Nobody beats on his brother and he doesn't get a say in it.

Of course, security breaks them up, and Amery's fluttering, half-scolding.

"What on earth, Rook?"

Rook beams at him with a bloody grin. "That bastard over there called me a fag."

The look on Amery's face is suddenly thunderous. He turns on a heel and marches across the way. Before anyone can do more than flinch, he's hauled back and clocked the first dude right in the face with an awful crunch. Rook didn't even mention a name. When he steps back, shaking out his fist, and the girl in pink lunges at him with a scream, Amery simply knocks her back with an open-handed slap. 

"You do _not_ ," he says into the stunned silence, "Have the right to insult anyone here in such a degrading manner. Much less my beloved. I will take this before the Board of Directors, and if I must, before the City Council. I will not tolerate such small-minded trash getting away with such gross abuse."

In the moment of silence as Amery turns and walks back to Rook, someone in the watching crowd calls a faint cheer. It is quickly hushed again, as Amery takes Rook's arm and angrily marches them out. Thom and Balfour scramble along behind them: Amery's grip on Rook's forearm _hurts._ His hands are strong, and she knows he does not really intend to hurt her: he's just angry. More angry than she's ever seen him before, even throwing out the sleazes and lowlifes that try to prey on women at the bar he works at. He's very strong, and she's seen him break a man's collarbone just grabbing him by the shoulder. Her arm is bruising under his grip, but she doesn't fight it, only hurries to keep up.

Amery does not speak on the entire drive home: neither do the rest of them, subdued under his anger. Thom even looks guilty, and Rook will have words with him as soon as they get alone. He doesn't need to feel like he was wrong to defend her as best he knew how. Words are better, sure, but they were raised on fists and blood, and she and Thom will always fall back to it when pressed. Amery, though, and Balfour...

The door is hardly shut behind them before Amery is hugging her, tightly, and Rook tries her best not to drip blood on his fancy suit. It takes her a startled moment to realize he is apologizing, a hard edge under his voice.

"What? Fuck, Amery, no, stop..." She fights him off and he stands there rigid under her hands. "It's not your fault. It fuckin' happens, okay? People do that. It's shitty but it happens."

She watches him take a breath. "I...have heard that they have been harrassing students on campus, but I...I'm afraid I never paid much attention...to those rumors." And there it is. Guilt under the anger, and Rook understands in a flash.

"Hey. It's not your fault."

"But I should have taken an interest before, and maybe..."

" _Amery._ " He shuts up. "It's not your fault. So what if you didn't pay attention until you got personally involved? That's people. It's not a personal failing. Stop that. So what, now you're fuckin' involved, and apparently you're going to kick up a shitstorm over it. Good for you. Your reputation is ruined to hell and back, sorry."

That makes him crack the tiniest of smiles, as she'd hoped. "I don't think you did much damage. I think that was mostly me."

"Well good. Let's get out of these monkey suits and have a real drink to properly mourn your reputation and start your war pow-wow or whatever. I am in the need of vodka jello shots." This makes Balfour grin, and she adds, "And spicy curly fries."

That makes Thom grin, and Amery groan, because those are terribly unhealthy.

Thom follows her into her room when she beckons, and behind closed doors she hugs him fiercely. "Thanks for backing me up, little brother. You know I had it."

"Yeah, I know you did." Thom hugs her back. "But if my big brother is starting fights, hell, I'm gonna help him."

Rook laughs into his hair. Whatever did she do to deserve these wonderful people on her life?


	5. Surely Is A Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rook and Amery discuss definitions and truth while snuggling on the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I smell sex and candy here_   
>  _Who's that lounging in my chair_   
>  _Who's that casting devious stares in my direction_   
>  _Momma this surely is a dream_   
>  _Yeah momma this surely is a dream_   
>  ["I Smell Sex and Candy," Nirvana](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11KQRgTIKEk)

Amery is surfing the internet and Rook is hanging upside-down off the couch playing Call of Duty when she hears the instant messanger sound go off on the laptop. She'd installed it on Amery's laptop because she borrowed it from time to time. Pausing her game, she looks up in time to see Amery take one look and flinch, closing his eyes. "Oh good God, Rook, what in fuck."

Rook rolls upright and peers over his shoulder. "Oh! Malahide got her sex-change done. Damn good for her Give me that." She nabs the laptop and types out a response to the picture, smiling a little as she waits for Amery to ask.

"Who on earth is Malahide, and why is she sending you pictures of her nether regions?"

"You are such a prude. Like I said, sex-change. We met on a trans forum a while back...she's one of the few I still talk to. She says hi, by the way." Rook grins up at him. Amery gestures with exasperation, then stops, blinks, and makes a thinking face. Rook swings her legs off the back of the couch and watches it hit him. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then just raises an eyebrow at Rook. She waits, patiently, for what he's going to say next, because she knows already it wasn't going to be about Malahide. (And that, honestly, is one of the reasons she loves this man so much: once introduced to things he takes so much in stride.)

"I wasn't aware you spent much time on internet forums. I rarely see you on the computer all."

"Not anymore. I used to, when I was a teenager. It was a pretty great thing, I mean, when I first found them. It was like, all these people out there felt the way I did. Made me feel less like I was some kind of screw-up. Wasn't like any of my foster parents ever told me different." Rook twists around with the laptop held above her head. Amery makes an alarmed noise and reaches over to balance it. This leaves his lap wide open, and she happily plops her head and shoulders across his thighs. Amery blinks down at her, his gloved hands tangled with hers over the warm plastic of the computer. Then he smiles, soft and tender, and reaches down to straighten her hair, as he always does.

Rook settles in and props the laptop on her stomach, the better to see and type back to Malahide. She grunts and lifts her head when Amery tugs on her hair. He smoothes it straight, and coiles it in a neat twist beside her left ear. "Anyway. I still kinda Email a few of them. Malahide's one."

Amery's fingertips feather over her temples. "What made you stop?"

Rook grimaces. She doesn't really want to answer that, because it brings back some very sour memories. It still hurts, a little. "Had a falling-out, you could say." She scowls. Amery taps her nose with a fingertip, and she catches it between her teeth. He makes a little helpless noise that she knows very well. It means _'that's so filthy I can't believe you just put that in your mouth.'_ He makes that noise a lot around her. It never fails to make her at least smile, and she lets his finger go. "Some of them were really....what's the word? Hardcore into the culture and everything. I made a post about kinda...getting comfortable in your own skin, because that's kinda what I did, and it...got ugly. Got called a bunch of names, got told I was a faker. And I'm not, I mean..."

She huffs a sigh, frustrated again. "I'm still more comfortable with other people knowing me as a guy, and you know that. But I'm not...I'm not sure I want to do hormones or surgery anymore. I did, for long time. But I just...I dunno. It doesn't feel as _wrong_ as it did. My body. I just...I'm me. I used to really flip out over it, get sick in the shower, shit like that. God that was awful. But for a few years now, I mean, it's...okay. It's me, too I mean? I'm still not...happy with it, I still think I'd be happiest if I really was a guy, you know? But I'm not, so I'm kinda...both at once but it's okay now." She chews on her lip a moment, staring up at the ceiling, the edge of Amery's ear in the dim light. "If that fucking makes sense."

Amery smiles a little, and traces his finger along her jaw. "I think I understand, at least a little." He pauses, breathing, then adds, "A great deal of life is, I think, trying to figure out who we are. It took me a long time to stop trying to...fit into the preconceived ideas my parents and peers had for me." His finger skates along her throat and Rook closes her eyes, shoulders pressing against his thigh. It feeels so good, just that delicate touch across her skin. "I don't believe people can be neatly defined and labeled, as much as we'd like for it to be that easy. We're not static beings. We change. We grow. And that is how you feel now, but it does not mean that what you felt in the past was not true as well. And it does not mean that if you feel different in the future, that will not be true, either."

Rook opens one eye. "That was way too damn complicated, mister college education."

"You're smart. Don't belittle yourself," Amery sniffs, but he's trying not to smile. His hand rests easily across her chest, just under her collarbones: the warmth of him, through the thin leather of his gloves, is perfect and heavy over her heart. "I'm glad that you fod a measure of peace with yourself. I think that you are a very complex but wonderful person."

"That's not what you said when you first met me," Rook retorts, with grin, closing her eyes again.

"Didn't you hear me? Things change." Amery chuckles, warm and deep. "I got to know you. And I'm glad I did, my love."

Rook wonders if she could really love him any more than she did now, her heart full. And then Havemercy tries to climb over her leg. "Shit! Ow! You fuckin' lizard!" she scolds, as the iguana's claws score her shin. "Shitqueen! I ought to put you back in your cage!"

Unmoved, Havemercy drapes her leathery self along Rook's shin and promptly collapses. Rook glares at the flat iguana around Amery's laptop. Iguanas have an amazing ability to turn themselves flat as flat. It's why _keeping_ a six foot ten pound iguana in a cage is harder than it first sounds. Havemercy is an escape artist of a caliber even Houdini could only dream of reaching. She had started this evening her cage anyway. Defeated, Rook flops back against Amery, who winces. "Ow. You have a hard head."

"Sorry." Rook scrunches up her nose at him. She hears another message ping, and looks up at the screen. It's Amery's mailbox. Amery leans over her head and pecks at the laptop with one hand.

"Mmm. Luvander has just invited me to go with him and Jeannot to the LGBT parade downtown tomorrow...." Amery glances down at her. "Or do I have other plans?"

Rook blinks at him, then grinned as she catches on. Tomorrow she has a day off from all her jobs. "Oh, I dunno. Those other plans might be willing to change."

Amery laughs, and bends over - he can only barely kiss her chin from this angle, though, and they both start laughing then.


End file.
